papers

New paper: Socioeconomic drivers of the distribution of urban vegetation

We have a new paper in press this week in Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, titled Drivers of diversity and tree cover in gardens, parks and streetscapes in an Australian city. While many overseas (USA and South Africa) studies show that income drives the distribution of vegetation, our study of Ballarat shows that eduction level rather than income drives tree cover, and socioeconomics are not important drivers of species diversity in gardens, parks and streetscapes. This highlights that different patterns can occur in different cities – while the urban LTERs in the USA (Phoenix and Baltimore) have produced a fantastic body of research, it is important that other studies are conducted in cities with less extreme physical and social environments.